I chose this book for this month’s review as it seemed like a perfect choice as our nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. Organized into five sections, each covering a fifty-year period, the book unfolds through chapters that read like short stories. The authors cover more than 35 women from diverse backgrounds and periods who played pivotal roles in shaping the United States, even though many of their accomplishments were ignored or forgotten in traditional history books.
With a few exceptions, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, most of the women highlighted in “We the Women” are figures many of us may know little about. Among them are Mary Katharine Goddard [GOD-erd], who printed the first official copy of the Declaration of Independence and who is the only woman whose name appeared on it; Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry, who became an internationally recognized writer despite being enslaved; Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon and the only woman ever awarded the Medal of Honor; Katharine Wright, the sister of the Wright brothers and without whom that famous flight may not have taken place, and Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and a key architect of many New Deal programs.
By sharing these and many other stories, the authors demonstrate that women were active participants in the major events that shaped American history, not merely observers on the sidelines.
I hope that this book will not only inspire and inform readers as it did me, but also encourage them to reflect on whose stories have been included—or left out—of our national narrative, and how we might address that going forward.
